


free-fall

by bygoneboy



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Non-Binary Jean Prouvaire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 02:35:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5113040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bygoneboy/pseuds/bygoneboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>e/r modern au. "the barriere du maine scene and enjolras's thoughts on it in a different setting." my oneshot for the les mis halloween fic exchange; prompt by mio_chan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	free-fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mio_chan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mio_chan/gifts).



> Sorry this is up a bit late! I hope you like it, every one of your prompts was sweet and intriguing, but I liked this one best! It was so much fun to do <33

There is a beautifully high-strung buzz that comes with the weeks before a protest. Enjolras feels it settle under his skin the minute he sets foot in the Musain— a lovely, tipsy feeling that is akin to free-falling. He pauses for a quiet moment, watching as the rest of the ABC whirls around him. Combeferre’s neatly-smoothed hair is in disarray as he squeezes past a finger-prinking, pin-making Bossuet; Courfeyrac is arguing emphatically with Marius, his passionate gestures bordering on violent; Feuilly is scratching out notes furiously on a whiteboard while Bahorel monologues, eyes ablaze.

There is a sudden thud from his left and papers go flying everywhere in a storm of text— “Enjolras!” wails Jehan from where they’ve tripped, looking close to tears as the previously neatly-stacked piles of flyers drift to the floor around them, and Enjolras shakes himself, and dives in to help.

He has always loved the hysteria of working under pressure. Even as he comforts Jehan and begins collecting the fallen flyers, he feels a kind of hysterical euphoria bubble up inside of him. Everything is coming together around them, their concept drawn up out of thin air, materializing before their eyes. The rally is in two weeks and despite all of their setbacks, the complications and bumps-in-the-road, Enjolras is dizzy with the realization that this is what it means to create, to be a _creator—_

“Sorry!” calls Joly, jamming in between Enjolras and Jehan with his hands full of hardly-legible notes and an enormous mug of coffee. “Hey Courf, take a look at these, will you?” The room is an ongoing hurricane of movement— every square foot of the room seems to be occupied with someone rushing to help fulfill their nearly unbearable to-do list.

“Enj!” Courfeyrac looks up from Joly’s list, raising his voice to be heard over steady clamor. “I think we’ve got everything sorted with the volunteers.”

He blinks, shuffling the stack of flyers in his arms. “Already?”

“Yeah—” he ticks the list off on his fingers. “I’m appealing to the tech grads, Feuilly’s got the labor activists coming to help out tomorrow, Joly’s scheduled to speak at the medical school, Bossuet’s in charge of rounding up some of the lawyers—”

“What about those artists?”

Courf furrows his brow. “Which artists?”

“Those—” Enjolras waves a hand vaguely. “The ones who said they’d do the banners, at the Barriere du Maine—”

“Oh, shit!” Courf presses a hand to his forehead. “Damn it, I was going to have Marius do it, but—”

“But he’s got a date tonight, I know.” Marius has been babbling nonstop about it for days— _the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,_ interrupting his speeches with tugs on Courfeyrac’s sleeves and whispers of _so nervous, Courf, what do I wear?_ “That’s—that’s fine, okay, I’ll just do it—”

Jehan clucks their tongue, looking sweetly concerned. “Enj, you’ve got so many things on your plate already. Please don’t try to take on the whole world at once.”

“I’m going to have to!” The euphoric-high he’d felt simply minutes earlier has begun to sink into a filthy, panicked mud. “We need those banners, and you know how forgetful they are— I’ll shift things around, we don’t have anyone else—”

“Hey!”

Enjolras turns.

Grantaire is squinting at him from across the room, one hand propping up his cheek, the other fixed lazily around the bottom of a cap-popped bottle. His dark eyes are crusted with sleep and red-rimmed with the intoxication of the night before. “ Hey,” he says again, pointedly, gaze locked on Enjolras.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras greets him politely, if warily. “You have something to add?”

“Yeah,” says Grantaire. “I’ll go to du Maine.”

Enjolras crosses his arms over his chest, like that will ward off his request. _“You_ want to go?”

“Why not?” Grantaire shrugs, hand sliding lazily up to the bottle rim. “How, uh, hard can it be?”

Flushing, Enjolras says, “I would rather go myself.”

“Ah, Apollo.” He hauls himself to his feet, runs a hand through his hair, black and thick and cow-licked. “You don’t give me enough credit, you know that?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“On the contrary.” Grantaire flashes him a grin. “I’m wildly so.”

There is tension here as well. There has always been.

But it is another kind of tension, a different kind of high, one that Enjolras cannot quite wrap his mind around. Things go in circles with them, their arguments and apologies sending them spinning out of the gravitational pull of the group's rock-solid foundation, round and round. They are astroids, flaming head-on towards each other, and yet even after they collide, some force beyond the laws of reality charts their courses to align again, and again, and again.

Enjolras always seems to have had _enough, already, my god,_ and Grantaire always seems to be insatiable, never seems to be satisfied. His disruptions at meetings, his constant drunken stupor; Enjolras’s refrain from pity, his anger in the face of Grantaire’s sharp smile.

Yet when Grantaire is absent at meetings, Enjolras worries that he will never show again.

And after an argument, Grantaire always looks at him differently, softly.

“You don’t believe in our cause,” Enjolras says firmly, as the cynic slides out from behind the table, leaving his bottle behind. “Or in me.”

Grantaire walks forward and spreads his arms out wide, inviting judgment, welcoming scrutiny. “I do,” he says, and when Enjolras opens his mouth dubiously, “I do, you know I do. I listen to what you have to say. I hear out your speeches on capitalism, political scum—about the world. I know what to do. So let me do it. Let me—” His expression flickers. “Let me be of use,” he says, gently.

“What do you want from me?” Enjolras asks. To his panic, his question sounds more like a plea. The supposed-hesitation in his voice, to even his own ears, already sounds like too much like the shatter-glass sounds of his mask, his hurry to hide what he _does_ feel— _what does he feel?_ Grantaire is a mass of knots and tangles and Enjolras already looks at him with enough frustration and dismay and a burning yearning to understand. Like his glance alone can untie them all, god, he wishes he could untie them all—

 _Why are you here? What keeps you coming? What do_ you _feel, what do you want—?_

“I want you to trust me,” says Grantaire, something gentle in his voice and tender in his eyes. “Just with this one, single thing. Okay?”

Enjolras hesitates a moment more.

And at last, “Fine,” he says.

He can see Courfeyrac’s eyebrows shoot up from the corner of his eye, Combeferre’s mouth pull up at the corners, Jehan’s knowing warmth. He ignores them.

“R— I'll give you a shot.”

At the nickname, Grantaire’s face lights up. “I won't let you down,” he promises, grabbing his coat, bottle forgotten altogether, fixing the ABC's scarlet slogan pin onto his breast-pocket. And stepping close, his hand on Enjolras’s shoulder, “Relax.”

Whispered softly, into his ear—Enjolras feels it, that beautiful, high-strung buzz, that lovely, tipsy feeling that's so near to free-falling—

And then he’s gone.

The door clicks shut behind him, and Courf turns to Enjolras with a strange kind of smile.

“You know he’s going to fuck this up,” says Couf. “Don't you?”

Enjolras knows.

But he thinks he should be permitted to free-fall a little longer.


End file.
